Which means Jesus would have been exposed to high culture and to high finance. His financial parables show high levels of sophistication. They’re not the sort of thing that reads like a peasant’s guess about how investment processes operated; the numbers read true to life. Jesus knew His way around the world of finance, and now we understand the human agency by which He acquired that knowledge. Jerry Bowyer

Rode out to Eulah Creek, a lovely rural locality consisting of a hall and a cemetery, this morning.

So, Jesus grew up in and around a commercially vibrant region, a conduit from the ancient empires of the East to the more modern Mediterranean ports that served as connections to Greece and Rome. Jerry Bowyer

Looking a little unsettled today.

Galilee was quite distinct from Judea. It was under separate political jurisdiction, a fact Pilate tried to use to get rid of the political hot potato of Jesus’s trial. Jerry Bowyer

Another perfect morning in Narrabri!

But God had not forgotten them. In other words, God was consciously taking into account the history of regional differences between the northern and southern kingdoms in His plans for the life of Jesus. The difference was, among other things, the difference between the makers of wealth and the takers of it. Jerry Bowyer

Jesus was not born in Bethlehem because it was great. He was born in Bethlehem because it was notorious. God starts the healing where things are most broken. Jerry Bowyer

Beautiful autumn morning. Just a breath of a breeze and a cloudless sky. Perfect!

This divergence between the relatively dynamic and entrepreneurial economy in which Jesus spent His formative years and the comparatively top-heavy, political economy of Judea provides a backdrop that sheds light on the rest of the Gospel accounts. Jerry Bowyer